Saturday, June 09, 2012

Paparazzo the Robot Photographer

Paparazzo is an automated photographer that I built for my robotics class. The robot scans for objects in the vicinity (within a 180 degree radius). If it finds an object, it takes a photo by pressing the shutter on the onboard point-and-shoot camera.

This is my second wholly original robot design (the first being a so-so arm-and-claw assembly). Most challenging was the hardware design: it took some puzzling to see how best to apply force to the shutter, and how to transmit that force through the arm. On the software side, it was also my first time to use variables and conditionals in a program (so I wouldn't need sensors to tell the swivel when to start turning in the other direction.)

I would've wanted to improve the program a bit more, but I ran out of time. Still, I'm quite happy with how Paparazzo turned out.